As we’re more than aware, there are many innovations that are announced daily. Some have been designed to make our day-to-day tasks easier, while others help us monitor our lifestyle. And, with the latest developments, we don’t need to carry around our favourite gadgets by hand — many of them are now wearable. In 2016, 61 million fitness, activity and sports trackers were sold along with 14 million wearable cameras and 15 million virtual and augmented reality headsets. QUIZMAN, retailers of blazers for men, tell us more:

Adding style to technology

Wearable technology must have an element of style to it. It has to look attractive and be something that people would happily wear with their regular items. This has been difficult, especially when it comes to items such as Bluetooth headsets and smartwatches, as they can often look out of place.

Developments in the smartwatch sector have made them more aesthetically pleasing. The latest releases from brands such as Samsung are much more stylish and look more like a watch that’d be bought for fashion purposes. With coloured leather straps and a circular face, brands are moving away from square screens and plastic straps as they realise that smart-watches that look very digitalised don’t go down as well with the target market.

Another example is the collaboration between Levi’s, Jacquard and Google. They created wearable technology that could be worn seamlessly with other clothes. The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket comes with its own app and you can control music with a few swipes of the sleeve. Innovations like this could be the start of fully-integrated wearable tech.

Monitoring our health

Technology can help us keep an eye on our health as well.

There have been some big innovations that have helped with this. In conjunction with global beauty brand L’Oréal, researchers developed a wearable device that could monitor UV exposure. Clip it onto a denim jacket or individuals can wear it on their thumb to get an accurate reading of the current UV levels and take appropriate action to keep their skin protected.

Have you heard of health tags? These are another recent innovation that are available. Link them up with your phone to track your activity, sleep, heart rate, breathing patterns and stress levels.

What could the future hold? Future developments could be made so that wearable tech can help out health services too. There has been discussion around the possibility that well-known fitness tracker, Fitbit, could help doctors predict how a patient may react to chemotherapy.

Looking to the future

Forecasts reveal that 411 million smart wearable devices will be sold in 2020, in a market worth $34 billion. But, what type of wearables will they be? CCS Insight predicts the following number of sales by device in 2020:

Wristbands — 164 million

Watches — 110 million

Eyewear — 97 million

Wearable cameras — 25 million

Hearables — 9 million

Tokens, clip-on, and jewellery — 4 million

Other — 2 million

As the figures reveal, wristbands and watches will still be dominating the market. And, with 97 million eyewear pieces to be sold in 2020, it will be interesting to see how these will be developed and designed to be truly wearable for all.